Worldly Chatter

I miss home. It is pretty simple; I miss home. I miss my family and friends. I miss the little deli on Sunrise Highway where I get a bagel with cream cheese and the pizza I can get two doors down. I miss America and it seems so odd for me to say that.

I am a happy person here. I walk the streets comfortable and content in how things work here. I am working and learning the language and thriving well when I know in America I wouldn’t get the opportunities I get here. In two and a half weeks I have a key to the restaurant. I am by no means the manager, yet, however they are giving more responsibilities to see how I would do as a manager. I never got that chance in America and it never mattered how hard I worked or attempted to show my worth. It simply doesn’t happen often. I love the food, the culture and the people. It has become home here almost from the moment I arrived. I walk the streets married, holding hands with my wife knowing I cannot do it in my own country. I have health coverage and can go to the dentist without breaking the bank. I have never gone hungry or slept on a park bench here like I have in America and yet part of me misses America.

Do I sound ungrateful or miserable in saying such things? Is it right to miss something with so messy of a history for me when I have happiness and contentment here in the Netherlands?

When I went to America last year, by the end of the two and a half weeks I missed Holland, I missed home. I missed the hagel slag and chocopasta. I missed the coffee and bread. I missed the streets and bicycles; the friendly faces and the Dutch that I had gotten used to being around me. Now I miss the English, the crappy sidewalks and food. Believe it or not, I miss how the news is less that objective and how they hide things. Here it is in your face and at times can be so raw. In some ways I still get surprised at the lack of censorship here when for twenty five years I heard silence when someone spoke because of the censorship that goes on. Hell, I even missed the processed to death food! Food in Europe tastes so different to foods in America, it tastes better yet here I am missing the crappy food! How in the world could I contemplate missing such things?

We are going to be there, in New York and CT, it two weeks. I will have all I want of American culture and home! Will it be like last year where I wanted nothing more than Dutch to be in my ear and to go to the center and get fresh baked Dutch bread, a cup of coffee and a broodje gezond? Right now all I want to do is hug my mom and dad and walk into a Barns and Noble! I feel so conflicted and confused and yet it is so simple, I miss home and feel guilty for it. Why? Why feel guilty for missing the place of your birth and the culture in which you come from.

I had a customer come into work who was a retired American. He lived in California, served in the Navy and was stationed in San Diego. He didn’t want to retire there. He wanted something new and different for himself so he moved to the Netherlands and settled down for retirement in our little town of Hilversum. He has no intention of ever returning to America. Why is it that once we leave, we never want to return except for the vacation once a year for two weeks? It’s like the other 50 weeks of the year we cannot possibly stomach what is happening there and loath the idea of living in such a mess when we know better exists elsewhere. Is it shameful? Is it self-preservation to want better? We know better is out there, we have tasted it and have felt it in the air. Like my customer said during our chat, why move back to that? We would be living with Bush as the president and feel the poverty, the lack of freedoms we cherish here and we will remember the petty dramas that go on. Why have those for ourselves when we live somewhere better? He had me thinking about that for a nice while; I am still brewing over the question. Yet here I sit, missing home, missing that little island I grew up on by the city.

living abroad, worldly chatter, New Yorker in Holland, home sickness